Treacherous

Army Sgt. Antonio Estrada was packing relief goods for the Mayon evacuees when their post was attacked by NPA guerrillas. Unprepared for battle in the most inauspicious circumstances, five soldiers were wounded in the assault.

Sgt. Estrada was hit at the back of his head. Doctors at the V. Luna Medical Center saved the soldier’s life – but probably not all of his bodily functions.

The wounded soldier, complaining of severe headaches, could suffer from the delayed onset of intra-cerebral hematoma. The damage could cause him blindness.

This is not the first time the communist guerrillas attacked troops on humanitarian mission. When landslides hit several towns on the Pacific coastline last year, an Army unit on a critical rescue mission in heavy floods was ambushed in Bulacan.

A few days ago, the papers carried a report that the leaders of the NPA ordered their units to desist from attacking military personnel assigned to assist evacuation efforts around Mayon. The communist leadership is obviously trying to contain the public relations disaster caused by the attack on Sgt. Estrada’s platoon.

The fact that such an order had to be issued is a scandal in itself.

It tells us that the quality of NPA guerrillas has become so degraded that they have become totally incapable of making political judgments. They could not tell a combat patrol from a mercy mission. They could not calculate the political repercussions of an armed action.

They see a target of opportunity and the morons shoot. This is a guerrilla force without any political sophistication. This is a bunch of fanatics with guns but without a clear sense of political purpose.

It is improbable that the NPA guerrillas in Albay could not have known that Army units were being deployed to help in the evacuation effort, to secure property in the endangered zone and to keep curious people away from the dangerous mudflows on the slopes of a hyperactive volcano.

The activity of Mayon could not have escaped their attention. The volcano and its brilliant nighttime extravaganza of rivers of molten rock is visible from afar. Thousands of people are being removed from its slopes.

The whole of Albay has become a beehive of activity. There are poor people being moved out and tourists streaming in. There is a swarm of scientists and disaster managers that have invaded the place. The dangerous volcano, after all, could put on a show unlike any we have seen before.

Then, in the middle of all these, the NPA moves in and starts shooting.

The presence of these brain-dead Maoist gunmen in the area of calamity adds another, totally unnecessary, layer of danger for all the men and women of goodwill who have come to help the victims of disaster. They exacerbate an already perilous situation. They threaten all those people busily going about their humanitarian missions.

The NPA is an entirely dysfunctional element injected into an emergency situation where the efforts of the kind-hearted are otherwise congealing magnificently.

They are a totally useless force, disrupting people who work, extorting from those who bother to produce wealth for the nation and killing those who, for one reason or another, they dislike. They afflict the already afflicted; bring misery to the poor; harm the defenseless; extort good money from those who bother to be productive and useful.

This is a condensation of the destructive role played by this so-called "revolutionary" movement in the life of our nation. It is a movement that not only fails to aid the most marginal communities where they operate; they add more misery to the already miserable.

And why is it that we hear not a whimper from those hyperactive do-gooders who profess to be guardians of civil liberties and protectors of the powerless?

Why not a whimper from those leftists who have managed to insinuate themselves into the august halls of Congress by claiming to speak for the people?

These rascals have been trying to pull the wool over our eyes.

For months now, they have been raising a howl over what they claim to be over 800 deaths from among their ranks attributable to politically motivated killings. Yet, when requested for a list of those 800 victims, they could not do so. When asked to cooperate with the investigation into these so-called extra-judicial killings, they refused as well.

But the police task force ordered to look into the killings have made good ground nevertheless. The other day, Task Force Usig filed murder charges against two men believed to be NPA guerrillas for the assassination of Elena Mendiola, Bayan Muna secretary-general for Isabela province.

Why would the NPA be killing those ostensibly allied with their cause?

The army tells us they have recovered a document issued by leaders of the CPP describing in detail an on-going purge of the Maoist movement. The document, titled "Paglilinis Bushfire (sa mga nakapasok na ahente ng kaaway), was reportedly taken from a guerrilla after an encounter in Tagkawayan, Quezon last May 23.

Paglilinis Bushfire resembles previous bloody purges by Filipino Maoists during the eighties and the nineties. These purges – Kadena de Amor, Takip Silim, Kampanyang Ahos, Operation Missing Link Zombie and Olympia – caused the deaths, often after severe torture, of thousands of leftist cadres, activists and guerrillas.

In addition, the national security adviser recently disclosed that the military has tabulated 1.130 "liquidation" operations carried out by the NPA from 2000 to May 2006. These operations resulted in the murder of 1,227 people. Most of these were simple people: village volunteers, local officials who refuse to yield to rebel demands, small entrepreneurs who could not respond to extortion demands from Maoist thugs and even rebel returnees trying to piece their lives together.

A number of high profile leftist leaders who dissented with the orthodox Maoist views of the CPP – among them, Popoy Lagman, Romulo Kintanar and Arturo Tabara – were gunned down in cold blood by their former comrades.

This is a murderous movement that has developed an internal culture of cruelty and callousness.